Word: interferon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...cumulative output can be substantial. Biogen's accomplishment, brought off by Swiss Molecular Biologist Charles Weissmann and his international team of colleagues, was to re-engineer E. coli so that it would produce largely complete molecules of human leukocyte IF. At Harvard, Biochemist Tadatsugu Taniguchi, who first isolated an interferon gene while at the Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research, and Molecular Biologist Mark Ptashne seem on the verge of getting their restructured E. coli to spew out human fibroblast...
Despite all the recent achievements, the growing excitement and the favorable early test results, the verdict is not yet in on interferon. Even IF's most fervent advocates warn against prematurely raising the hopes of cancer victims and their families. They appraise IF's prospects in the subjunctive, peppering their comments with "if" and "would" and "could." Were interferon finally to prove an effective cancer drug, there would still be a long way to go. At least a few?and possibly quite a few?years will pass before it becomes widely available. "In terms of research," says Dr. Ernest Borden...
Indeed, the interferon bandwagon seems to be gathering momentum. According to last week's Boston Globe story, the new M.I.T. production technique could bring the cost of fibroblast IF down from about $50 to only $2.50 per million units. Says the A.C.S.'s Rauscher: "Right now it's costing something like $150 a day to treat patients, and a full course of treatment can go as high as $30,000 or more. This is very good news indeed." So it is. For even if interferon should only partly live up to its initial, most tentative promise, it would augment...
...designation is appropriate, because doctors still precede their cautiously hopeful statements with serial "ifs." If longer-range tests show good results. If interferon can be manufactured in the massive quantities needed for effective treatment. If it proves not to have unexpected side effects. Should these and other ifs become fact, IF will be an ideal cancer drug, for it is a natural substance, produced in infinitesimal amounts by the body. Unlike existing treatments, interferon seems not to damage healthy cells or produce horrendous side effects. Its only apparent shortcomings seem temporary and confined to slight fever, fatigue, and a small...
Even now, at ten medical centers across the U.S., the largest test ever of interferon is under way. Bought with an initial $2 million provided by the American Cancer Society (the most generous research grant in the organization's history), tiny quantities of the drug are being administered to some 70 patients with four different types of cancer ?most of them advanced?that were no longer responding to conventional treatment. As more interferon becomes available, at least an additional 75 victims will be treated...